


A Different Kind of Permanency

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Angst, Deaf Dean Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Inspired by Fanart, Love Confessions, M/M, Tattoo Artist Castiel (Supernatural), Tattooed Dean Winchester, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23834866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: Cas pulls away. This time, Dean assumes, so he doesn’t mess up the tattoo out of shock. He usually has a quip for everything, so to see him gaping and speechless speaks louder than words.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 9
Kudos: 183





	A Different Kind of Permanency

**Author's Note:**

> So hi! A couple quick notes:
> 
> This was inspired by an art I found while scrolling through Etsy one day for some fan art for a new journal I'm buying. The link to that specific art is here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/631297570/tattooed-deaf-dean-supernatural-dean. Please consider supporting her in any way you can because she's clearly amazing at what she does. You can also find her on Tumblr at bee-does-art.

It smells like someone robbed a flower shop and ran through the place like an ill-coordinated flower girl. Between that and the faint, high-pitched rattling of a gun that can’t be lethal but to old regrets and fresh skin, it’s an environment Dean’s taken solace in. It’s a place that’s healed old wounds time again, despite opening new ones with slack-jawed strangers. He can’t hear them, but their clear expressions of revulsion don’t need accompanying audio.

Even on a busy day in Clarence Creations, it’s not busy enough for new clientele to look away from him. He can’t lie and say he was born with tattoos, or the quarter-sized gauges, the way he was born liking men. These were all entirely his choice. But it’s a choice that bares no regrets.

There’s usually a bell up front to get the attention of the shop owner or the other artists, but Dean’s been very vocal about his disdain for it from day one. He’s not an invalid. He has a working pair of eyes that he can use to scan the shop to find who he’s looking for. And if he happens to be wrapping a fresh tattoo in Tegaderm like he is now, he’ll wait like everyone else.

Turning back to the waiting area, Dean browses the featured artworks—everything from one-color reverse crosses to multi-colored traditional dragon tattoos. Dean’s seen these dozens of times. The one that always catches his eye is a three-foot colored sketch of a creature Dean’s never seen. The best way he can describe it is Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen, Hawkgirl, and one of James Cameron’s Avatars conceiving a child in Narnia.

With electric currents wrapping around its elongated cerulean arms, legs, and torso like vines, the creature rears its three angry heads towards the absent sky. One head is a ram, the other a zebra, and the third something akin to No-Face from Spirited Away. And if that isn’t cool enough, it also has wings. They’re pitch black and outstretched to the point of almost not fitting on the paper, revealing a few shedding feathers that fall like leaves off a winter-stricken tree.

A tap on his shoulder startles him until he turns to see who it is.

Bringing his right hand into a C, Dean moves clockwise from his forehead until he’s traveled around the globe of his freckled face, imitating those staring at him with a slack jaw in doing so.

Dean lied and told Cas that his sign name was associated with the sign for ‘Earth’, since he’s down-to-Earth, and Cas hasn’t bothered questioning it.

The sign for Earth is much more complex.

The sign for ‘beautiful’ is quite simple.

Even though Dean can’t hear him say his name, he loves the way it makes Cas’s large lips part and his pierced tongue curl. He starts to sign a question, but Dean cuts him off with passionate flicks of his right index finger and thumb on his temple. _Great idea._

 _Already?!_ Cas signs back, exaggerating with all ten outstretched hands pushing out and away from him. “This better be a touch-up.”

“Buy me dinner first,” Dean quips. Cas’s hand moves quick on a reply. “You know that’s not how you sign ‘thank you’, right?”

“I know. Let me see it.”

As Dean pulls up the two images, Cas moves closer until he’s breathing down the side of his neck.

You can say their relationship is unique. Cas has been closer to him more times than his own mom. He’s tickled Dean’s neckbeard with a two-hour floral piece. He’s been eye-to-eye with him for ten whole minutes twice (Dean can write an essay on his Morse code interpretation of Cas’s stubble); once for the black crescent moon on his right temple just shy of his hairline and the second for the adjacent mini cross underneath his eye (his “holy teardrop tattoo”, as Dean jokes). He even accidentally brushed Dean’s nipple once while shading his pentagram tattoo.

But there’s something intimate about their proximity when Cas isn’t providing a service. He wonders if it doesn’t go unnoticed by Cas, too.

“I like the disconnected style of the hand print,” he says, snapping Dean back to reality. Well, until he has to focus on Cas’s mouth again. Lip-reading is a blessing and a curse around Cas, because it’s easy to get distracted by his in particular. “Black, I’m presuming, like the rest. We can do cool some things with the shading to make it look raised rather than it just sitting on your shoulder. Was that it?”

Clearing his throat, Dean fumbles with his phone before remembering how to swipe left.

“Huh. Interesting. What language is that?”

Dean fingerspells it.

“Eno—enoch—enochey pokey?”

Dean laughs. He’s getting better, anyway. “Enochian. It’s a dead language that was used by angels—if you believe in that sort of thing.”

“What does it say?”

“Let’s just say it’s the name of someone who means a lot to me.”

“Elusive, but okay,” Cas says just as a girl across from them dramatically drops the pen from her clipboard holding the written consent. Clearly cross-trained in passive aggressiveness, Cas turns to the girl and asks if she needs a new pen.

That’s one of the many things he loves about Cas. He doesn’t let people make him nervous.

He turns back to Dean with the subtle roll of his eyes. “Come back at five.”

“Five it is,” Dean affirms before heading out the door, grinning all the way to the local burger joint.

💉

Cas pulls back just shy of completing the shading on the last letter. “Dean.”

“What?”

“You’re bloating like my nephew after he eats a peanut,” he points out, setting the gun on his prep table so he can use both arms to fold over his chest in disapproval. “Biggerson’s again?”

Dean glances down at his shoulder, which is only _slightly_ puffy. “Before I answer that, you’re being way too dramatic. That looks like Muhammad Ali after a tetanus shot.”

“I told you _no_ milkshakes before a session. It’ll disrupt the healing process.”

“See, that’s what happens when you assume,” Dean says, fingerspelling ‘ass’ and gesturing between them. “I stayed clear of the milkshake. I only had a burger—pack on the carbs and protein, right?—and a side of fries… drenched in salt.”

Cas drops his head and looks up at him through those judgey dark blue eyes.

 _What?_ he signs with pursed eyes and lips and outstretched, shaking hands. “I can’t _avoid_ salt.”

“Clearly,” Cas says, nodding towards the tattoo adjacent to the one he’s doing. “That was one of the first tattoos I did on you. I should’ve known what I was getting myself into when you came here straight from Biggerson’s and said you wanted a saltshaker on your bicep.”

“Please,” Dean says, rolling his head with the circular motion of his hand on his chest, “You knew damn well. You just don’t like to admit you actually love me.”

It’s meant to be a joke, and it’s clear Cas got it with the roll of his eyes, but there’s something he’s trying to hide. His smile twitches a little, as if there’s a frown behind it threatening to destroy it. You catch a lot of little things like that when one of your senses is eliminated.

At first, that semi that plowed into the family car that killed his dad and left his brother in a coma for a month was a curse. But now, it’s a blessing. Where Dean refused to listen, he’s forced to.

But he’s not always the best interpreter.

Cas grabs his gun and starts back in again before Dean blurts, “It means ‘Cas’.”

“What?”

“The Enochian, the lettering,” Dean clarifies, “it says ‘Cas’.”

Cas pulls away. This time, Dean assumes, so he doesn’t mess up the tattoo out of shock. He usually has a quip for everything, so to see him gaping and speechless speaks louder than words.

“I chose the language of the angels because that’s what I’ve considered you for the last three years I didn’t even think I’d be alive for,” Dean continues. “I was in a rough place when I came to you. You know, with my dad and Sam in a coma. Sam’s initials that were engraved into the car was the least I could do to honor him. But then I got high. Not on alcohol or drugs. I got high on the tattoos. You showed me a new way of life without the aid of those things anymore. You raised me from a trauma-induced Hell I’d been living… hence the hand print.”

Seemingly hoping his saliva will act as a sealant to his gaping mouth, Cas licks his lips. “Dean, I… I’m… flattered? Is that weird to say?”

Dean shakes his head with a brief laugh, “No, Cas, it’s not weird to say.”

Cas smiles shyly; the kind that quietly yearns for a reason to. “I’ve only done what you’ve asked of me over the years,” he says, then, adding with a laugh of his own, “I should thank you for keeping me in business.”

“You know, you don’t have to be so modest all the time.”

“I have to if I want to refrain from kissing you.”

Cas’s eyes blow wide. Clearly, that admission wasn’t supposed to come out.

Dean smiles wide now. “You don’t have to refrain at all… but you do have to learn the sign.”

Cas bites back his equally wide smile. “Okay. Shoot. What’s the sign?”

Turning his hands to face the other, he presses his fingers into something resembling puckered lips and taps them together.

“Okay.” Cas sets the gun down again and mimics the motion.

 _No, no, no,_ Dean signs with the aggressive tap of his two forefingers and thumb, “Remember how to ask a question? Ask me.”

Cas scoffs, but starts over, pursing his brows, then pointing a finger at Dean, then signing.

Dean knocks enthusiastically with his right fist, meeting Cas halfway for a kiss.

A year later, Dean gets his first finger tattoo: Cas’s name wrapped around his left ring finger.


End file.
